Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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113. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of resource teachers recruited in each of the years 2005 to 2017 and to date in 2018, by county, in tabular form. [21595/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that DES Circular 0013/2017 for primary schools and 0014/2017 for post primary schools were published on 7 March 2017.

These Circulars set out the details of the new model for allocating special education teachers to schools.

The revised allocation process replaces the generalised allocation process at primary and post primary school level for learning support and high incidence special educational needs, and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) allocation process which provided additional resource teaching supports to schools, to support pupils assessed as having Low Incidence disabilities.

The new Special Education Teaching allocation provides a single unified allocation for special educational support teaching needs to each school, based on each school’s educational profile.

Allocations based on the school profiles were issued to all schools on 7 March, 2017.

The aim of this new model is to deliver better outcomes for children with special educational needs. Substantial research, analysis, consultation with service users and stakeholders, and piloting have gone in to the development of this model and all of the evidence points to the fact that this new system will deliver better outcomes for children.

No school, has lost supports as a result of the implementation of the new model. In addition, no school received an allocation, for the support of pupils with complex needs, less than the allocation they received to support such pupils during the 2016/17 school year.

An additional 900 teaching posts have been provided in the 2017/2018 school year to support the introduction of this new allocation model. The provision of an additional 900 teaching posts is a very significant investment in the provision of additional teaching support for pupils with special educational needs in our schools.

The additional funding provided additional supports to over 1300 schools who identified as needing additional supports as a result of the new model while ensuring that no school received a reduced allocation.

The numbers of learning support and resource teachers from 2009 to 2017, and Special Education Teachers in 2017/2018 are set out in the tables.

For the 2017/18 school year to date, 13,306 additional special education teaching posts have been allocated, of which 13,281 have been allocated to schools, with 25 posts having been allocated to the NCSE to develop support services for schools.

Due to the manner in which the allocation of resource teaching posts was recorded prior to 2009, where additional allocations were only made to schools once all surplus allocations in schools were accounted for, accurate details of the resource teaching allocations made prior to 2009 are not available.

Details of the breakdown of allocations for special education posts on a per county basis for the years 2012/13 to 2017/18 are available at

Due to the manner in which data was collected and recorded prior to 2012, details of the breakdown of allocations for special education posts on a per county basis are not available for the years prior to the 2012/13 school year.

*As at March 2018. Includes 25 posts allocated to the NCSE to develop support services for schools. The remaining 94 post which have yet to be allocated are available to allocate to schools for appeals, demographic growth, or where exceptional circumstances arise in schools.